About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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January 27, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020? Current total: $443.24 for both initiatives.
Pronouns
For years, autocorrect has been the bane of my writing about JB. It constantly turns “zir” and “ze” into “she” or “her”. It finally dawned on me that I use the singular “they” all the time in conversation, why not here? DUH. JB is now they, for blogging purposes.
Pop culture exposure
I found out recently that the daycare doesn’t allow their staff to read or share Disney stuff.
I noticed something like that in the past but I mainly thought it was a more of a ban on superhero stuff so that the kids wouldn’t act out hero/villain dramatic play. (They do anyway, of course.) And I’m positive I’ve seen the staff taking small breaks and letting the kids watch Disney music videos or clips every so often.
Anyway, I think it’s good to have ONE space in their lives that isn’t overrun by Disney marketing. It’s not like it’s a totally Disney-free zone, the kids are allowed to bring their own clothes and toys and books that are Disney, and they do. It’s just that the teachers have to bring in all other learning tools and toys that aren’t Disney, so there’s a better balance.
We’re also making an effort to expose JB to other art and shows and intellectual properties. Some are nostalgic, the new She-Ra and My Little Ponies because I have fond memories of them and the new versions are pretty fun. Some feel more cultural, Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo were lovely gentle good for kids movies and I’m discovering SG movies I haven’t yet enjoyed. I’ve always meant to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service, and now I will share that with JB. (Note: turns out it was too early, they weren’t ready.) (more…)
January 24, 2020
2020: If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Current total: $313.24
1. After my seventh day of too much pain, and six nights of not sleeping because of the too much pain, I got more than 6 hours of sleep!! Hallelujah! Breaking that vicious cycle is really tough.
2. I truly dislike Fidelity’s contributions interface. It did a weird thing with our IRA contribution last year and then again this year, and I had to chat with them twice to straighten it out because the first CSR was dismissive and also wrong with his advice. BUT it’s done now!
3. I asked Jay a question that I realized applies to me too: What gives me the same rush as spending money? For me, spending money doesn’t make me happy, but buying things makes me think things are getting done. I’m the Family Quartermaster, buying supplies is half my job around here: dog treats, dog food, canned veggies for the dogs, medications for Seamus, groceries, stuff for the house, the list feels endless. But that tricks my brain into thinking that buying things = productivity. So what else gives me the “rush” of productivity that isn’t buying frivolously?
Today’s answer: I think I have to create things to feed that appetite.
Brief interruption to say: Whew. So many bad things happening this week. Family is going through some really rough stuff and I’m doing everything I can to help. It requires research and consulting with people who know better than me and more work. The rental is a whole $$$$ THING, so much work, thankfully I have someone to consult with for that as well. I’m doing all this work to get our taxes in order. JB is due to start kindergarten this year and we’re getting all the information needed for that and I can’t pretend that I’m not freaking out about that a bit. My checking account looks like it’s going to be running about $2000 short and that’s coming out of savings. ARGH.
4. Sera did well with major distractions on a few of her walks: a kid running up to pet her, a small dog running by (running dogs seem to freak her out for some reason).
5. I resolved to get a dog walker to help with Sera’s continued training and to relieve PiC’s tasks up to a few times a week.
6. Thanks to a supporter who wanted to do monthly donations, I figured out how to set up a donate button! This was intended mostly for our Giving but hey if someone wants to support my labor of love that is this blog, I have no objections.
7. I created! I made a thing! I’m so proud of this one. It’s particularly good for the Very Organized Gift Giver, or the aspiring organized gift giver. The look inside feature should be live (not on mobile, alas) so you can see the cool pages I designed. Whee!
8. Achievement stopped syncing with Google Health a year ago and I’ve wasted a whole year of walking by not getting my act together and getting a new app to track my step. FINALLY found an app to use and created an account and synced it. That shouldn’t have taken me a year. But it’s done.
:: How was your week?
January 23, 2020
I haven’t figured out makes up my metric of “enough”. Since my baseline is so different from other people, some days, enough is the absolute bare minimum: ate a food, drank some water, basic hygiene (maybe). On better days, it might be: prepared food, did some work, read something for fun, walked the dogs, paid attention to our money in some way. What’s your enough?
There are official rules and there are the real rules. It took me forever to learn this and I caused a lot of trouble while I was figuring it out. When did you learn this? How did you learn it?
Rules for girls. I’m sad that not all the posts are live anymore.
This neighbor gifted ham is kind of funny, though it brings back memories of the ham that bested me. Do you and your neighbors give gifts to each other?
We’ve had our share of problems with Marriott points but nothing on this level. They kept telling PiC that his points were about to expire in March, but when logged online his points were “already expired”. Calling customer service came up with “they’re still live but could expire at any moment without notice.” I miss SPG so much. Marriott’s service is nonsensical but I have a lot of points with them so we need to use that up.
Yetanotherpfblog’s charitable giving in 2019. Do you have a giving plan for 2020?
I felt like nothing big was accomplished in my 2019 too but I loved this reframing of that being a good thing (I too read a lot of books): “Transitions, even good ones like promotions, are hard on people; please be kind to everyone (including yourself!). Because I am in a place where I am grounded deeply in living the rewards of having made many positive life choices over time and not too many unexpected curveballs were thrown my way this year, I was able to accomplish a lot. (#stability is a kind of #privilege).”
me after the holiday season
https://twitter.com/Rocioceja_/status/1210988574264320001?s=19
January 20, 2020
2020: If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families this year, please read this post. We have $25 in contributions so far!
Frustration upon frustration.
At first, I thought that my PM was overreacting to the tenant’s first late payment in four years, but we set up a plan in case that was the start of a pattern.
Unfortunately, it was. The tenants were mother and son but the mother was the person paying rent and that first late rent occurred as soon as mother was moved out for health issues. The rent has been late every month ever since.
Not only that, the late payments continued accompanied by repeated (totally preventable) HOA violations that cost $100 a pop and a lot of time to fight back to save that money. Sometimes the time spent was wasted anyway because they wouldn’t remove the fines.
I only do a little better than break even on monthly costs so a tenant that doesn’t pay on time, racks up very avoidable fees that we have to take time to fight, and takes up precious extra time meant that I could no longer afford to charge below market rent.
If he’d actually talked to us honestly about issues with his income, if he’d cleaned up after himself and didn’t rack up extra fees every month ($100-400 a month!), we would have continued to work with him. (more…)
January 17, 2020
2020: If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families this year, please read this post.
1. I made a curry and got all KINDS of accolades from JB. They must have been in a really good mood because they declared “everything about it was good: the mushrooms, the bell peppers, the bamboo shoots, everything!” *waves expansive hands*
Want the recipe? Pop on down to the bottom there. Speaking of recipes, I REALLY want to try making this seafood stew.
2. I had to get a filling repaired at the dentist, apparently I’m still gritting my teeth in my sleep enough to grind it down. Oops. Luckily we caught it early and the fix was painless. I also got some good advice on better flossing technique.
3. It’s SO COLD. It is partly the winter chill and partly the dampness that gets right into you marrow. Thank goodness for space heaters, working furnaces, warm socks, and rice packs.
4. I was gifted a tool from my wish list that should have been really useful except I picked badly and it wasn’t the right quality for my needs. Luckily I was able to return it in store for merchandise credit.
5. You know that feeling you get when you’ve run too far too fast, your muscles are full of lactic acid and it seems like there’s no mercy in sight? This flare up on Sunday was something like that but swapping lactic acid for molten lava. I couldn’t sleep a wink at night, almost gasping for air from the pain, and could hardly move the next day, thoroughly nauseated all day.
The hardest part of these flare-ups is surviving from moment to moment. The second hardest part is seeing past my bitterness that all those years wasted being conned by biofather, all that wasted money I could have saved if he hadn’t lied to me for years full well knowing I was sick and in pain, means we can’t afford for me to retire or go work part time when I’m this wrecked.
I try not to let that drag me too far into the spiral of anger. I’m bitter that early retirement could have been in my/our grasp if it weren’t for his lies but I vent about it and then open myself up to seeing the small good ways I can improve our finances now, today. Thanks to Maggie‘s guidance and encouragement, I have one tiny entrepreneurial income stream to nurture, and the creative aspect of that project is good for my brain as well. Every time I feel like it’s just too little to make a difference, I remind myself that the entire foundation for my financial success is being willing to take every tiny incremental step and every single penny for paying off debt, then building up an emergency fund, then building our investments.
6. That moment that Carol / Captain Marvel responds to Yon-Rog’s emotional manipulation.
I loved the Kelly Sue Captain Marvel comics and the film adaptation was fun, even if there were the usual liberties taken with comics canon that maybe I’ve finally gotten used to.
7. This continues to be a rough week: high pain, lots of work, and needing to keep moving even though it’s exhausting and feels halfway to impossible. But we’re still here, still moving.
COCONUT CURRY RECIPE
This started out life as as a coconut chicken lime curry because I had 6 amazing juicy limes and I had to do them justice. Then I kept tweaking it because I can’t help myself. It turns out that it’s such a flexible mixture, you can do a whole lot of any of the ingredients or leave many out, and it’s still good. Quantities pretty much don’t matter, I just use whatever I have on hand omgoodness I am turning into my mother she used to say quantities don’t matter too and it used to make me bananas!
Ingredients:
Cubed chicken (I have replaced this or supplemented with cubed tofu or cubed roasted pork)
Bell peppers and crimini mushrooms
Tofu cubes
Bamboo shoots
1 can of coconut cream
Seasoning:
Fish sauce, to taste
Tamarind paste, to taste
Lime or lemon juice, to taste
Garam masala, to taste
Garlic
Directions:
In a Dutch oven or large pot, saute the garlic and vegetables. If the protein is raw, take out the vegetables and saute the meat next. If it’s already cooked, just add them into the pot with the vegetables. Add the coconut cream, tofu, bamboo shoots, and then start seasoning. Add the fish sauce, tamarind paste, lime juice, and garam masala. It’s perfectly fine with just fish sauce and/or tamarind paste but the more of the seasonings you add, the deeper and more complex the curry will be.
January 16, 2020
2020: If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families this year, please read this post.
A Twitter thread on Excel keyboard shortcuts, thanks @PhysicistLisa! I love Stephanie‘s which is so useful to me right now, to paste without formatting: ctrl + shift + v
My Father and the Dragon King
I hope to live a life that warrants this kind of memory / obituary when I’m gone.
Microfiction.
I was thinking of Sarah’s thoughts on how FIRE intersects with feminism, particularly as a well paid woman in STEM. She makes a great point in her reply comment: I worry that so much of our feminism is focused on getting women promoted and paid – getting that representation at higher levels, with salaries to match.
We do need feminism to get us up there with the promotions and payscales, but is that the only way to do feminism as a STEM woman? I would like to think that advocacy for and building cultures where URM including women feel welcome is as much feminism as climbing the ladder and staying in the workforce but maybe that’s simply not possible if you aren’t a higher-up woman who is being paid well. Thoughts?
Speaking of feminism, I’m still mad about Tokyo Medical School and their sexism.
I was thinking about how I’ve not ever just lived on my own, or lived off my own income by myself, I’ve always had someone to care for or support. I’ve also never been in a position where I didn’t need to save for the future, so the idea of figuring out a retirement spending budget where I’m only spending and not saving any longer feels weird. Over at Abby’s, I was wildly guessing that we might be good in retirement with $110,000 in annual income but it’s such a guesstimate. I don’t know if we’ll still have a mortgage (assume yes?), what we’ll do for healthcare, or what other regular expenses we’ll still have (little to no childcare I hope, pet expenses vary widely). Tanja made the very real point that we can’t blindly rely on a 4% withdrawal rate for these calculations. It’s a tough needle to thread. I neither want to spend the rest of my life working (no matter how long or short that life is) nor does my health suggest I have a long good life ahead so I don’t want to spend what’s left of them working all the time. But we don’t have enough saved to change that picture any time soon. How much do you think you’d need if you were no longer needing to save?
On the subject of early retirement, I like following Tanja’s journey into this unknown to me realm. I’ve got a few early retired friends who have been retired for many years so I know it can be done but it’s nice to follow Tanja’s journey from the saving period to the doing it period.
Baby goats and forage
January 13, 2020
Annual Lakota drive
Working on this project earlier in the year (scroll down to the Giving paragraph) worked out so well last year!
I wrote my update before the November 17th collection deadline. Donations had trickled to a stop, I’d ordered everything and confirmed the recipients all received them, we were pretty set. It seemed like a good time to wrap up the project and share how much good we’d done!
Then I was surprised with a couple healthy donations that same week. I happily went back to the drawing board and immediately bit off more than I could chew with the donated $250 and putting in another $50 out of pocket.
A big family with two parents, 9 children, and 2 grandchildren was in need of winter coats, diapers, and wipes for the grandkids. Yes, of course, that pick absolutely made sense with the $300 we had. Quite the bargain hunter am I!
I mused over the challenge with a visiting friend, still thinking I could outsmart the prices. They slipped me some extra cash. Not because they didn’t have faith in me but because they remain in touch with reality. It turns out they were right, I needed more than just $300 for 13 coats. I mentioned this on Twitter, and y’all seriously stepped up. Some folks sent a second donation, others sent their first, and we had soon enough to fill our biggest family’s needs!
Family 6 received: 13 winter coats – one for each member of the family. 2 giant packs of diapers and 2 cases of wipes for the babies. 2 shirts, a pair of jeans and a pair of waterproof work boots for the working parent in the family.
My heart swelled three sizes. Thank you all so much for caring and giving!
Bonus: One of the things I asked them to do when we figure out the matching funds is to create a “Warmth Fund” – a fund that can be drawn on to help families stay warm in whatever way is most suitable for their circumstances. This can be used to purchase blankets, firewood, space heaters, and so on.
For 2020:
I’d like to try something new this year: start collecting early, throughout the year, and make purchases for the Lakota-Okini families in the fall in the hopes that this would be helpful for a variety of budgets. I know that cash flow throughout the year often dictates what and when I can give. I do wonder if collecting throughout the year means it’ll mostly come at the last minute.
I am opening up contributions now through November 1st, 2020. Let me know in the comments if you’re interested in contributing and have an opinion about collecting all year vs just in a 6-week period like I did last year.
Edit to edit! Originally, I was going to shop in the fall but it’s still winter, the forecast is Bitterly Cold for some time yet, and people are hungry now. So as contributions roll in, it makes sense to help those who are cold and hungry right now, and through the year, instead of waiting until year-end. This will also distribute the work better!:
Edit to add: Last year we raised $2669.94 to touch a total of 27 lives. I would love to see if we can match that or do more in 2020.
Libraries, literacy and love of reading
I devoured library books as a child and was wretchedly grateful for every single book I could borrow because our family was too poor to buy books and Little Libraries weren’t really a thing back then. I used to stare at other people’s bookshelves like I was starving. We’d visit family and the people would simply disappear from my vision – all I could see was their books.
To this day I remain a voracious reader, and my birthday gift tradition has become a gift of money to our local library. My library allows directed donations and I support their ebook collection instead of buying books for myself. Accessible books for more people!
I’ve long dreamed of becoming rich and supporting rural libraries in a significant way but in 2020, I feel called to do what I can even if it’s just on a really small scale. I’ve known that rural counties simply don’t have funds for books, much less the kinds of extras I could not even have dreamed of as a child.
For example: tool libraries and health electronics that can be checked out, puzzles for kids, a massive selection of tv shows and movies! That’s just for starters. By contrast, rural libraries might maybe have bestsellers and discarded books from other libraries.
I’d like to help them out.
The best way to help them at this level is donations of cash. While I certainly have thoughts on the kinds of books and offerings that would be great, the person who knows best what their library patrons need and what they can actually manage to process and make available is the person who works in the library. They may need more of a specific category of books, e-books, new chairs, computers, keyboards or any number of things we don’t know about.
This year, I’d love to gift some money directly to two rural libraries: Culpeper County in Virginia and Chatham County in North Carolina.
Would anyone be interested in contributing to rural libraries as well? Like with the Lakota families, I will be allocating some of our annual giving budget to each library regardless of interest but if there’s interest, I’m happy to do any coordinating necessary to streamline it for the recipients. As y’all have shown me two years in a row now, we can do so much more together!
You can make contributions to ….
1. My Ko-Fi page (note: Ko-Fi flows through Paypal so they take fees out there since that’s my blog’s account)
2. You can send as a gift (otherwise PayPal will take fees out) to admin [at] agaishanlife.com. If you’re sending via PayPal on mobile, make sure to click on the arrow next to “paying for goods and services” to select “send as a gift” because that’s tripped up more than one person!
Edited to add: If you’d like to donate monthly (this has fees), you can use this donate link.
Whichever way you go, please A) specify what it’s for and B) if you want email updates.
Bonus: We can also get employer company matching for some of our donations though I am still trying to untangle the weirdness of their matching administration.
:: I’d love to hear your thoughts!